


Spin Gravity

by venndaai



Category: The Expanse (TV)
Genre: Gen, Present Tense, Uneasy Allies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-04
Updated: 2020-02-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:21:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22555522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/venndaai/pseuds/venndaai
Summary: Drummer and Ashford, after the gates open.
Relationships: Camina Drummer/Naomi Nagata, Klaes Ashford & Camina Drummer
Comments: 4
Kudos: 32
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	Spin Gravity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mathelode (engmaresh)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/engmaresh/gifts).



The first thing Drummer does, after she sees Naomi and the rest of the Rocinante crew to the airlock, is go to the makeshit medical clinic set up in the spinning Drum and make sure she and Ashford have beds on opposite sides of the clinic, with plenty of partitions between them. Then she passes out for four hours.

When she wakes there’s still gravity bearing down on the parts of her body she can feel, so the ship hasn’t completely stopped working while she was unconscious. She gets up. A medic notices, and tries to get her in a wheelchair. Tells her in gory detail what the mech is going to do to her body. She wants to tell the woman to shut up, but refrains. She accepts the wheelchair. If it makes her less intimidating- if the future of the Belt and maybe humanity depends on her being able to intimidate the people on this ship into doing everything that needs to be done- she will simply have to make up for it with an extra unpleasant glare. 

When she makes her way to Ashford’s side of the clinic, he’s still unconscious. The medic taking care of him is a large-boned Earther from the Thomas Prince, and Drummer wonders what Ashford will think of having his life saved by an Inner, once he wakes up. She’s told that he will wake up. The internal injuries are healing, thanks to the balm of gravity, the same gravity that’s crushing Drummer’s spine. 

Drummer’s known a lot of people who died from a lack of gravity. Many more who died of too much of it. Wounded and unable to heal without thrust. Stroking out when the cheap juice failed. They are creatures of the void, her people, but it’s not an easy existence. Maybe it should be. Maybe someday it will be. Drummer doesn’t know if any of them can really imagine that, though. Even pirates like Ashford, all they could see was the theft, the pain inflicted by the Inners. Not what the Belt could be if that pain lifted. And now Ashford- now Dawes- they say they see a shining future, if the OPA could reshape itself to be more like the Inners. 

She never believed that was what they really thought. She thought both of them were just trying to get one up on her, on Fred. Thought men like them only cared for themselves. 

“So,” she says to Ashford. “Feeling smart now, eh?”

He doesn’t answer.

He was wrong about the alien station. Maybe he’ll be wrong about the future, too. 

  
  
  
  


When Ashford wakes up, Drummer is in her office. Not the one she’d been using, in the ring near operations, but the office designed for a Mormon captain, with pictures of an Earth that never existed on the walls, and a view looking out over the now spinning Drum. A place designed to give an Earther the faint illusion he was still at home. It makes Drummer edgy, but the voice of Fred in her mind is saying that it’s more important to make the Inners feel comfortable here. 

“That station is going to be the center of everything,” Fred said, after Drummer sent her post battle report and waited fifty minutes for the response. “If they let us hold it, the Belt will be the future. We’ll finally have what we want. And they’re tired. We just need to make ourselves the path of least resistance.” 

He’s right. He usually is, when it comes to psychology and politics. Drummer suspects Ashford would agree with him, too. 

Well. Neither of them are captain. It’s her office, for now, at least. 

And all she wants is to never see it again. All she wants is to be floating in zero gravity, in a fog of military grade painkillers. All she wants-

_ You know what you want, _ she thinks. Ya. She wants Naomi back. But that not going to fucking happen. 

So she sits in her office, the wheelchair folded up and shoved under her desk, and glares at the Martian and Earther officers with their fancy gold edged uniforms, and bites down on all the words that try to come out of her mouth. And then her tablet beeps, and it’s the medic, telling her that Ashford is awake. 

“Excuse me,” she says tightly. “I need to visit medical. Can we continue in two hours?”

“Of course,” the Martian says, trying to be gracious and sympathetic to her injury. Fuck them. 

The vodka is still in her desk, and the captain’s office contains a bolted down cabinet with Inner-style glasses. .3g is more than enough to keep liquid in a glass. Drummer grabs them too. 

It takes her long enough to get back to the clinic that she’s hissing with frustration, but she takes a moment to calm herself before wheeling herself in. 

He’s awake. He looks at her, sharp eyes in a sunken, weathered face, but the usual brightness in those eyes is gone. She raises the glasses. He turns away. 

She wheels herself closer. “Here you are,” she says. “Here we all are. Human race still kicking. Something to celebrate, ya?” 

“I understand why you didn’t space me,” he says. His voice is reedy, dry, on the edge of cracking, but it’s clear. He’s present, not wandering. “Don’t understand why I’m not waking up in da brig.” 

“I need a first officer,” Drummer says. 

She almost hates him, right now, not for anything he’s done but for how much she needs him to work with her, to be the person this ship- this new station- needs. She’s never felt this alone before, not even when she really was alone, when no one gave a falota whether she breathed air or vacuum. Naomi is gone. She has to keep saying that to herself, hoping that soon she’ll start to understand it. Fred is far, far away and not going to be here any time soon. 

Ashford’s face is still turned away from her, but he’s speaking again, and this time he does sound like he’s wandering. “We came so close,” he murmurs. “If you hadn’t stopped me, poof, whole human race out like a light, Belters and Inners all together in the dark.”

“It didn’t happen,” Drummer says. “It won’t. We’re staying here, watching the station, making sure it doesn’t. Want the job?”

Silence for a while, and then Ashford raises his fist, in a weak Belter nod. 

It’s good enough. She’ll take it. 


End file.
